B. R. Frieden uses a single procedure, called extreme physical information, with the aim of deriving 'most known physics, from statistical mechanics and thermodynamics to quantum mechanics, the Einstein field equations and quantum gravity'. His method, which is based on Fisher information, is given a detailed exposition in this book, and we attempt to assess the extent to which he succeeds in his task.

Its wisdom and sensitivity make Personal Knowledge required reading for epistemologists. By stressing the active components in scientific knowing--appraisal and commitment--Polanyi shows that knowledge is less "objective," more complex, and more widely distributed in nature than is tacitly supposed by most epistemologies. Knowing implies a foundation in skills, a confidence in one's ability to judge beyond the range of well-formulated rules, and a commitment to the existence of an answer to one's questions before the answer is in sight. Like a (...) Platonic dialogue, this book conveys more than it states, and the broad foundation of insight embodied in the examples would support more conceptual superstructure than Polanyi provides. But that serves to make it an instance of its thesis--that we know more than we can now say.--R. F. T. (shrink)

A text for an undergraduate problems course placing special emphasis on a wide selection of texts for students to evaluate: in a treatment of teleological ethics the authors include Nietzsche, R. B. Perry and G. E. Moore; the section on political philosophy presents a range of authors from Mill to Mussolini. Perhaps its chief virtue is that it relies almost exclusively on modern writers and yet manages not to be parochial.--R.F.T.

Working within the framework of Ryle's "knowing how-knowing that" distinction, Hartland-Swann argues that all knowing involves a decision and that "knowing that" is a special case of "knowing how": knowing how to say what is the case.--R. F. T.

A warm portrait of Gilson as historian, educator, and Thomist drawn from his own writings and lectures. The selection is well made and includes several pieces previously unpublished in English; Pegis contributes an introduction in which he explores Gilson's attitude toward Christian philosophy and the Middle Ages.--R. F. T.

Windelband's History, the most popular of the manuals at the turn of the century, is reprinted in the Harper edition, while the Dover reprints the considerably expanded version of part of the History's first volume which appeared in Iwan Müller's Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft. The Harper edition is more smoothly translated, and the pages are better designed, while the Dover is better bound and somewhat more detailed. Both are rather wooden, and the bibliographies are badly out of date, but on (...) the other hand they have never been really adequately replaced. --R. F. T. (shrink)

A reprint of the 1901 first edition. Albée's history traces two phases of Utilitarianism: "First, the gradual development of the theory in the direction of formal consistency down to about the beginning of the nineteenth century; and secondly, the later development, often at the expense of formal consistency, but always in the direction of doing justice to the concrete moral ideals which had been partly lost sight of in the earlier, more abstract form of the theory". The school is traced (...) from Cumberland to Sidgwick.--R. F. T. (shrink)

Burke and his predecessors seem to be most before the mind of the editor in his long introduction to this standard eighteenth-century work: he traces the growth of Burke's ideas on art and compares them with contemporary investigations. The sections examining the doctrines themselves are somewhat vague, and those tracing the philosophical reaction to Burke rather too short; however the study of Burke's influence on artists is fascinating reading. The text is done with care, and the footnotes include excerpts from (...) the reviews of the Enguiry's first edition where these seem to have guided Burke's revisions.--R. F. T. (shrink)

The translations from Hindi which make up this collection of discourses by a contemporary sanyasi are smoothly done; the discourses themselves are primarily moral and devotional. --R. F. T.

The Bahá'i faith, a savior religion incorporating beliefs of most of the world religions, was founded in Persia in the 19th century. Ferraby gives a clear and readable exposition of its tenets.--R. F. T.

The manifest destiny of Israel runs through this uncritical, popular history like the manifest destiny of the sheriff through a Western movie, and the Israeli-Arab dispute is traced back ultimately to the characters of Jacob and Esau.--R. F. T.

The sub-title, "Essays on the Common-sense Background of Philosophy," gives a clear picture of this prolix work: it is episodic and common-sensical. But the episodes do not seem to be chosen with a single effect in mind, and the common-sense serves not as a ground for dialectical argument against the philosophers but as just one more philosophy.--R. F. T..

In this thoroughly documented doctor's thesis, van Buren explores Calvin's doctrine of Christ's role as a substitute for men.--R. F. T.

A mathematical theory of society, built around a concept of quanta of human energy, and applied in support of a social order combining capitalist and feudal features. "For those impatient of minute analysis," the jacket assures us, "the first 80 pages or more can be read lightly..."; to those impatient for such analysis, this is good advice regarding the whole book. --R. F. T.

An introductory text which relies on the intrinsic excellence of short pieces. Husserl, Bergson, Whitehead, Quine, Lewis, Tillich, Scheler, and Sartre are represented by ten-to-fifteen-page excerpts or articles.--R. F. T.

Basson's introduction to Hume follows the pattern which has led to successful treatments of Aquinas and Kant in this series: he limits himself almost exclusively to exposition and minimal criticism, apparently assuming that the reader will not be able to obtain or to follow the original text.--R. F. T.

In this revised edition of his 1934 work, Kraft takes up the themes of authority and scientific method, concluding that the Geisteswissenschaften are not a homogeneous group and hence have no single method or principles.--R. F. T.

The second edition of this book on the problem of truth and the idea of semantics is an unchanged reprint of a volume originally published in 1957. While it is formally organized into twelve chapters, it effectively falls into three parts of which the first two primarily deal with the theories of A. Tarski and R. Carnap. Aside from a brief chapter on "Semantics, Quantification Theory and Metamathematics," the final part consists of a chapter, which the author entitles "Epistemological-Theoretical Discussion (...) of Semantic Concepts." In this the longest, and for anybody acquainted with the theories of Tarski and Carnap, probably most valuable chapter of the book, Stegmüller deals with a dozen objections to the semantic conception of truth, the importance of semantic concepts for various disciplines, including logic, mathematics, epistemology, and the empirical sciences, with the interrelation between semantic linguistic analysis and Wittgensteinian ideas, and finally with Quine's criticism of the analytic--synthetic distinction and certain aspects of the ensuing discussion up to the time of the book's original publication. To ascertain the author's current ideas about many of the topics with which he deals, it is obviously necessary to turn to his more recent writings. This book stands as an example of its author's incomparable clarity of critical exposition.--R. F. M. (shrink)

While claiming merit primarily for pedagogical clarity and usefulness, this exposition of St. Thomas' opinions on knowledge and truth also tries to delineate the boundary between neo-scholastic, and Cartesian and Kantian epistemology.--R. F. T.

The editor's historical and critical introduction to the Letter is quite good--particularly for readers unfamiliar with British politics of the period. German and English texts are printed on facing pages.--R. F. T.

The "History of Ideas" mode of presentation here finds an especially congenial application to the notion of evolution. Among the fifteen papers, five of A. O. Lovejoy's on the idea of evolution are reprinted with some modifications. Glass contributes a long study of seventeenth and eighteenth century theories of species.--R. F. T.

Written in the genre of Windleband's histories, this text is designed for use in a course in which the students have little or no access to primary sources, or as a reference work. The translation is rather less ponderous than the original, and its supplementary readings have been altered for American students.--R. F. T.

A non-technical exposition of the proof and related questions in the foundations of mathematics is presented here. The work is built around the authors' study which appeared in Scientific American.--R. F. T.

Like so many amateur adventures in philosophy, this work is marked by extreme breadth and by failure to state either problems or solutions with any precision.--R. F. T.

Moritz collects a number of rather elaborate bits of empirical evidence to refute Berkeley's subjectivism.--R. F. T.

A popular philosophy based on popularized science. Viscount Samuel puts forward a common-sense realism, but defends it with little more than the assertion that scientists cannot decide among themselves precisely what they want to put in its place. --R. F. T.

The first volume of this French textbook series to appear in English. Gardeil's exposition is usually in the form of a paraphrase of Thomas' conclusions on questions raised by Aristotle's De Anima, but he also treats the more peculiarly thomistic problems of knowledge of individuals, the soul, and God. The Value of this work as an introduction to Thomas' psychology is enhanced by the inclusion of almost sixty pages of texts in an appendix.--R. F. T.

The acquisition by the Bodleian Library in 1948 of the Lovelace papers has made possible a number of historically oriented papers on Locke and his philosophy, e.g., J. Yolton's John Locke and the Way of Ideas, J. W. Gough's, Locke's Political Philosophy, and W. v.Leyden's publication of the Essays on the Law of Nature. Cranston's biography is a distinguished addition to this list: it makes full use of the source material and is as thorough as one could ask in revealing (...) the concerns--especially political concerns --of Locke's life. It is rather less satisfactory in its treatment of his epistemological development. --R. F. T. (shrink)

In preparing this second edition of his commentary, Weldon has left the historical sections materially unaltered but has almost tripled the critical treatment. This leads to a far more valuable book, particularly since he has replaced long summary passages with systematic treatment of the issues Kant raises.--R. F. T.

This balanced and thorough study of the loyalty programs reviews the history of prosecutions and the dismissals under them, and makes detailed proposals for their revision.--R. F. T.

Molesworth's elementary text covers a good deal that would usually be called epistemology, treating logicians as varied as Socrates, Locke, and Russell. It tends to be conservative and sympathetic to the "classical" logic of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.--R. F. T.

Exercises in symbolization and problem-solving are provided in a format which allows space for completing the exercises and removing pages for easy correction.--R. F. T.

Everyone who takes a serious interest in the mind-body problem ought to read this book, which is an attempted tour de force in defense of the identity-theory. The reader should have a taste for formal logic, including some set theory, in order to judge whether the author's penchant for slipping into symbolic notation is required by his argument.

Taking Locke's epistemology as a starting-point, Maine de Biran elaborated the notions of expectation of resistance and kinaesthetic response into a theory which attempted to account for the origin of our ideas of personal identity and causation. In this clear and intelligent study, Hallie compares Maine de Biran to the British empiricists, finding him most in sympathy with Berkeley; he also assesses the importance and limitations of this internal critique of empiricism for both empiricism and later French philosophy.--R. F. T.

This spirited work is better Milton than ontology, cosmology and physics. Milton drew on many sources for the cosmic imagery of Paradise Lost, but he did not unite the traditions thoroughly. Curry is rather too kind to Milton, calling him syncretic when he is merely eclectic.--R.F.T.

In this monograph R. W. Beardsmore presents a lucid and readable presentation of what he takes moral reasoning to be and what he expects moral reasoning to accomplish. It is another in the long list of works which attempt to apply later-Wittgensteinian insights to the problems of ethics. The common moves run this way: Wittgenstein insists that to say that something is justified, or to say there are justifiable reasons for some position implies some fundamental agreement in our language game. (...) Moral argumentation can only take place within the context of a shared ethical language game. This moral viewpoint invests, what appear to be facts with value. According to Beardsmore the importance of shared moral viewpoints is missed by R. M. Hare with his dichotomizing of fact and value and his insistence on a decision of principle. Beardsmore also attacks the position of Phillipa Foot whom he sees on the opposite side of the issue from Hare. He sees Foot as insisting on the necessary dependence of values upon facts, which leads to her inability to account for changing moral viewpoints. Beardsmore tries to show that these views of Foot and Hare agree at least on one point, that there must be one specific way to give reasons for moral positions and hence solve moral disputes. Beardsmore has made a significant contribution by offering an illuminating application of Wittgenstein's insights to the problems of ethical theory. If they did nothing more, these insight's would be important in so far as they help to unlock the hold that the fact-value dichotomy has imposed on ethical theory for so long.--R. F. D. (shrink)

Why Christianity, with its conception of agapé was successful in winning the allegiance of the late Romans is the question which leads Ferguson to his examination of the Homeric virtues and the Stoic morality. He finds the classical virtues are incapable of "providing that basis for an universal morality for which people were seeking" because they were each linked to a vanished society or failed to reach to the heart of men's moral strivings. His analysis of the pagan virtues is (...) less than sympathetic, though thoughtful and based on considerable learning.--R. F. T. (shrink)

In this group of well-written essays Randall discusses explicitly the group of ideas which have been implicit in his earlier works in intellectual history. The first section, which deals with the philosophy of history, argues that particular things have particular histories, and that these histories belong to them on the basis of what they are taken to be and expected to become. The metaphysics of the second section is a pluralistic analysis of actual experience and its symbolic representation.--R. F. T.